Archive for the 'Government' category

So Here’s The Thing About The Postal Service Retirement Funding…

Feb 10 2013 Published by under Congress, Craziness, Government, Politics

My lefty friends and those I follow keep regurgitating this ridiculous left-wing talking point about the reason the Postal Service is scrapping Saturday delivery.  The gist of it is this:

Republicans in Congress passed a bill that requires the Postal Service to fund 75 years worth of health benefits for every employee, and even for employees that don’t yet exist.  They were given 10 years to do this. It is causing massive cash problems for the Postal Service and that’s why they have to cancel service. It’s all Republicans faults and it’s just because postal workers are unionized.

There’s a whole lot of BS in that, so let’s unpack it slowly lest the sticky goo get all over us.

First, it is true that Congress passed a law requiring full funding of the Postal Service health benefit program for every employee until they die.  It was NOT, however, Republicans in Congress that agreed to give them that benefit. The Postal Service made a concession to unions to pay for full health care benefits for employees until they died.  That was a collective bargaining concession that a lot of dumb companies have agreed to, and many of them have been brought down by it.  Case in point, General (now Government) Motors or GM.  In the mid 200os, Warren Buffett was asked by Charlie Rose if he was interested in buying GM.  Buffett’s response, in short, was no. GM, he explained, used to be a car company, but had become a pension and benefit operation with a small car unit attached.  There was no way to save GM without serious concessions from the Unions.

He clearly didn’t know about Barack Obama back then.

Flash forward to the Postal Service and you have the same issue – free health care, and pension benefits, until you die.

That is a serious problem when health care costs rise exponentially each year, and people stop sending mail.

So Congress says, “Hey, who will get stuck with the bill if the Postal Service collapses and can’t keep paying those costs out of current revenue?”  Yup, you guessed it, the taxpayer.

They pass a law that says USPS must put cash aside from current revenue to cover that expense in the event of a USPS failure.  They gave them ten years to fund the pot because they had no idea if the USPS would last for twenty.

So the USPS keeps putting cash aside and all is going fine – except for the fact that costs keep rising (yes, despite ObamaCare, costs keep going up and are expected to for the foreseeable future) and the USPS keeps losing business and has to put less in than planned because they’re broke.  Discovering that their “free health care for all forever” plan is eating them alive, they recently announced a reduction in Saturday service to cut costs.

To be clear, if Congress had made Enron or any other big company fully fund pension plans, the left would be cheering.  If a company had to keep a big pile of money on hand so every employee would be taken care of in case of a bankruptcy, the left would be jumping up and down.

In this case, however, the howls can be heard in China.  The right, they wail, is trying to kill off unions and shutter government (never mind that they’re also the first to point out that USPS isn’t actually government to begin with).

The reality is Congress (perhaps for the first time ever) was actually trying to keep the taxpayer from getting screwed if the Postal Service went belly up.  The postal employees would have been left with nothing or the US taxpaying population would be asked to cover an employee benefit liability currently estimated at about $100 billion.

For once, they did the right thing.

All of that said, let’s now address the “75 years” and “employees who aren’t born yet” nonsense.

The funding requires enough money to pay these benefits until an employee is dead.  In the case of the US, life expectancy is around 79 years. So an entry level employee at 18 or 19 years old would need to be covered for almost 60 years – not 75.  Again, that’s the deal the USPS made with them.  Don’t blame Congress for them taking that on.

As for the “employees not yet born” issue, those are not funds paid in.  Funds are only paid in on the actual employees.  However, for business planning purposes, the USPS has to estimate how much an employee will cost them to do business now and in the future.  For that reason, they have to assume that the person working for the postal service 20 years from now will need to be covered, even if they’re not yet born.

They plug that estimate into a formula that tells them what future costs might look like.  It’s really no different than weather forecasting, climate modeling or any long range estimation.  You make assumptions based on current data.  What you don’t do, and what the postal service does not have to do, is make payments on someone who isn’t a human yet.  It’s not happening, so stop repeating that.

Hope that clears some of this up.  If you really want to dive into it, here is the Congressional Research Service take on it from 2011.

 

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A Mass Murderer’s Suggestion for Curbing Violence

Jan 16 2013 Published by under Crime, Gaming, Government, Music, News Media, Politics, Society

I am a mass murderer.  At least that’s what the media would have you believe.

I play violent video games. I watch violent movies. I have read tales of fantasy, violence and destruction most of my life.  I also listen to rock music – the harder the better – and have for most of my life.

Various media outlets and commentators have identified all of these things as contributing factors in the violent outbursts of the unhinged.  Given that I participate in not one, but ALL of them; given that I have participated in them for thirty years; and given that I am a guy who spends much of his day in front of computer and TV screens, I should be a powder keg just looking for a spark.

But despite all of that, I have not once opened fire in a shopping center, taken up arms against an employer, or gone on a school rampage.

I do own guns. I hunt with them. That’s it.

I work, a lot.  When I have time, I play video games…. with friends… and with my kids…  None of them have opened fire at a mall.

So it amazes me to see so many people blaming the games, the movies and the music for the acts that horrify us on our TV screen.  They call for video game content restrictions, or labels on moves, music and games.  And yet the senseless tragedies continue because all of our handwringing is applied to the wrong question.

Rather than ask “what outside influences caused that guy to be violent” we should be asking the question “why does one person exposed to that level of violent content show no tendency toward actual violence while another does.

That variable – for all the talk of guns, and high capacity magazines, and violent games/movies/ music – is what we must endeavor to identify and address.

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The Problem With No More Solyndras

Sep 14 2012 Published by under Congress, Craziness, Government, Politics, Waste

So the House has now passed the exceptionally poorly named “No More Solyndras Act“.  I say poorly named because it doesn’t actually prevent more Solyndras.  As Taxpayers for Common Sense has noted, they should have called the bill the Even More Solyndras Act.

“This measure would still put taxpayers on the hook to loan out billions of dollars more to at least 50 additional shady alternative energy schemes that were submitted before January 1,” Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican, said on the House floor Thursday, adding that the bill should be renamed “The 50 More Solyndras and Then We’ll Stop Wasting Your Money — Really — We Promise Act.”

The bill grandfathers in 50 existing applications totaling nearly $90 BILLION dollars. For those keeping score, that is roughly 180 times as much money as Solyndra lost.  The bill is meant to be a political winner for the GOP, but actually exposes the party to huge liabilities.

Let’s assume that one of these fifty companies collapses (which is quite likely).  Now the GOP owns the failure, not Obama and the Democrats.  You see the Democrats actually pushed for an amendment that would have ended the program outright.  They argued that if the program is so bad that it needs to be ended, we should not gamble another dollar.

By letting these 50 applications proceed, the GOP is essentially gambling that none of them will fail.  Mark my words, when they do, the Democrats will trot out statement after statement that says, “See, this is why we wanted to end it all.”  The GOP, on the other hand, will be left flat footed trying to explain how “No More Solyndras” produced more failed companies and more lost taxpayer dollars.

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My letter to the Fine Folks at the CPSC

Aug 14 2012 Published by under Business, Government, Society, The Law

Earlier today I posted about the regulatory overreach by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and its war on the rare earth magnets known as Buckyballs and Nanodots.

This afternoon I penned a letter to the CPSC to register my complaint.  If you are interested in sending your own letter, I encourage you to do so. You can visit SaveOurBalls.net or click these links to open a new email to Nancy Nord, Anne Northup, Inez Tenenbaum, Robert Adler and their media flack Scott Wolfson

In the meantime, here is the text of the letter I sent. I thought I would share it.

I am writing to add my name to the list of those opposed to your action on novelty magnets.  As an owner of such novelties sold under the name Buckyballs and Nanodots, I purchased those magnets for my use and entertainment.  I am able to read warning labels and keep the magnets away from my kids as directed. I am also able to understand the Zen Magnets warnings as what they were, an attempt to both educate owners and simultaneously mock the government for its egregious meddling.

It is unfortunate that the government feels the need to protect people from their own impairments – stupidity being among them.  I was under the impression that Darwin had conclusively proven that isn’t really possible.  For instance, the CPSC notes that, on average, 25 children are killed per year by furniture.

How does the CPSC justify allowing the scourge of dressers and bookcases to terrorize our homes?

Perhaps the CPSC should instead require a warning label on people that says “Your IQ must be at least 100 to procreate.”  That would address both the possibility of children being given magnets to eat AND people putting a 100 pound, 60-inch TV on top of a flimsy, off-balance, particle board stand they bought at Ikea.

In the meantime, I have ordered several more sets of Buckyballs to show my ongoing to support to a company that has added jobs and more than $40 million in direct economic activity to the country in the last four years, despite the incompetent job government has done of attempting to solve the nation’s fiscal problems over the same period.  Those sales represent the first effective stimulus this government has achieved.

So congrats on that.

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CPSC vs. BuckyBalls

Aug 14 2012 Published by under Business, Government, Society, The Law

If you have talked to or followed me in the last 24 hours, you have no doubt heard about BuckyBalls - those small, BB-sized, rare earth magnets you see for sale in novelty shops.  April gave me some for Christmas and I am constantly fiddling with them.

Well the US Government, in its infinite wisdom, has banned them.  They have ordered all companies selling rare earth magnets to stop doing so.  I discovered this yesterday when I went to order a set from nanodots. They are no longer for sale in the US.

When I found them unavailable on Amazon, I immediately became suspicious because you can buy anything on Amazon.  A quick search of Google News for Buckyballs reveals the problem:

Feds file suit against Buckyballs, retailers ban product

The Consumer Product Safety Commission on Wednesday sued the maker of the popular magnetic desk toy Buckyballs to stop the sale of the product because of the risks posed to children.

Some major retailers, including Amazon, Brookstone and Urban Outfitters, have agreed to stop selling these and similar products at CPSC’s request. Children who swallow the tiny magnetic balls can require surgery when they become stuck in their intestines.
Dozens of children have needed surgery to remove the tiny magnets in Buckyballs as well as those sold by competitors of its maker, Maxfield & Oberton. At least 12 of the ingestions involved Buckyballs.

There have been, by the governments numbers, 33 incidents of kids being harmed by magnets.  12 involved Bucky Balls.  Bucky Balls has sold 2.2 million sets in four years each set contains between 125 and 216 balls. making a grand total of 275 to 475 million magnets in the wild.  If those 12 incidents involved just a few magnets, you are looking at a potential failure rate of one in 6 million to 1 in 13 million.

Yet the government response, despite warning labels on the product that specifically say they are dangerous if swallowed, is to ban the sale of the product.

By way of comparison, just for example, almost as many kids are killed by furniture per year (25) than have been killed by magnets.  More people (35) are killed per year by hot water than have been killed in total, by magnets.

Yet the government has not yet banned furniture or hot water.  But it may just be a matter of time given our overly-litigious society and activist government.

This overreach threatens, most directly, a company called Zen Magnets, the makers of Buckyballs.  They have, as noted, sold 2.2 million sets of magnets in the past four years (since they started).  The sets cost between $20 and $40. So despite the dysfunctional economy that government seems unable/unwilling to take seriously, this company has flourished by selling a novelty desk toy aimed at adults.

Now the government wants to shutter them because a handful of parents can’t or wouldn’t read the warning labels and be decent parents.

When people ask you to give an example of over-zealous, anti-business regulation, this is a good place to start.

 

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